Week Two begins

Ventral view of a parasitic isopod. The cressant on the left is the dwarf male. The speheres in the background are eggs prematurely released from the marsupium.
Clione- a beautiful swimming pteropod mollusc
Cadlina leuteomarginalia

This course has continued to be an indecent about of fun. My photomicroscopy's coming along, even if my photography isn't. I spent part of the weekend in Seattle tracking down some non- reflective plexi to make dish bottoms, and I borrowed a can of black spray paint from DT. Now I can shoot the animals (at least those big enough for the dissecting scope) against a less scratched and distracting background. As of now, I've got a Nikon CoolPix 990 with a remote shutter, with a 10x ocular-cmount adapter on the dissecting scope. Today I got a nice shot of a parasitic isopod (with attached dwarf male) which a student found under the carapace of an poot Ibogea and a Cadlina. In class we discussed some of the weird meiofaunal phyla- the gastrotrichs and acanthocephalans. Acually got to see some gastrotrichs squeezed out of freshwater wrack from Egg Lake. These guys are both on the order of 100 um, and my pictures aren't pretty. But I like these two.

Tomorrow is the best low tide of the year, and we have a field trip. It also looks like the family is going to arrive from CA. I'm thrilled. It's been peaceful in their absence. But where's the fun in that?

By popular request. Kohanyi included for scale.

FHL Day 1

Now THAT'S a fouling community.
The instructor GP shows us how to explore the tire organisms
The lab.
My bench.
The view from the dining hall.


Today was the first day of the inverts course. It's pretty interesting to be facing the tall side of the podium again. Most of the other students are early in their grad school careers- i'd say the weight of students are in the first half of their PhD- decided on their topic but not their project, if that makes sense. There's also someone who's writing a book on inverts- she's a professional photographer, we also have someone from NOAA/NMFS Hawaii, and a student from Moscow University (doing a dissertaion on vestimentiferan worms, and a student from mainland China. I think it'll be a good group.

This morning was sunny and cool. I got a cup of coffee in town on my ride into the labs, and met the lab office staff and finished my paperwork while the kids were having breakfast. The morning lecture (8:00) was on basic zoology from a funcitonal systemics approach. We got an overview of the body wall and coelom formation with a view to it's diagnostic utility- lots of emphasis on coeloms as hydrostats and regions for gas exchange. Big banks of memory being dusted off here. Late morning was all orientation stuff- boat use, stockroom, network, library. Interesting to me as a metaphore for the same functional systemics approach we see in the lab. All animals have to solve the same problems, and all academic institutions have to solve the same problems. So many variations on so few themes...

Met Moose for lunch. He's just back from a workshop on teaching undergraduate science. Again, we're all trying to solve the same problems. Here I have less patience, as so much of pedagogy is jargon which reduces to "be considerate". Not that this isn't worth saying, but one tires of the precious cleverness that goes into restating it. You need to think about what students know, what they need to know, and how to help them from the first spot to the second. Perhaps I only think I do this, and the fact that so many science teacher workshops hit this again means that this isn't what's happening. I'll have to think about this.

Afternoon lecture continued on fxnl systems- Gut, Blood/vascular, Excretory/Osmoregulation. Then lab. The lab space is nice- we all have a compound and dissecting scope, an a rack of seawater tales runs the length of the lab. Today we walked out on the dock and flipped over the tires that serve as boat fended and pulled some of the fouling community off and brought them back to the lab. I ended up watching a scaleworm for ~ 90 minutes trying to draw it and key it out. Then most folks evaporated for dinner and I got the lab to myself for a few minutes to finish my keys.

I went to see the Cowdonnells and try to identify mystery NorthWest berries (which turned out to not be the salal I expected.) and then home to have dinner with Dennis and read my text for tomorrow.

FHL T-1

Cormorants on the Ferry dock piling.


The Cottage at The Spring Street International School- home for the next five weeks.

The Labs, from the ferry.


I'm back at FHL after a twelve year absence. It's amazing to be back. I don't know the animals and plants here as we;; as I do the one's I've been studying in Monterey, but they're what I grew up with, and somehow it does my heart good just to see them again.

Managed to catch the 5:25 ferry, the MV Chelan. We saw a pod of four Dall's porpoise in the first five minutes of the run. It's good to be home.

Haiku

As extra credit on the finals for Marine Science and AP Bio, I asked my students to write some haiku. Here are some favorites.

Dr. Reilly's beard
Sometimes longer than his hair
and that makes me laugh.

-SG

Nondisjunction.Wow.
That is a really big word.
Makes me feel smarter.

-SG

The final I took
In AP Biology
was quite difficult.

-SR

Phosphorylation,
I never understood you.
Someday, I hope to.

-KA

Nature
Green leaves make the trees bright.
Funny to think that green is
being rejected.

-MB

Mendel-wrinkled, smooth
peas made him Father of Genes.
Better than a priest.

-KK

Biology hurts
my brain- overflowing with
terms, details, and angst.

-KK

Green anemone
sand covered ball unfurls to
show its artful inside.

-CR

The vikings traveled,
Christopher Columbus, too.
I wish I knew more
of what I studied.

-LE


That about sums up the semester. More later...

Hooray! Crap!

Today I met with the head of the upper school where I've been subbing and tutoring. Apparently, he's been getting a lot of comments about me. I'm fairly used to this, but in this case he says the comments are brilliant. This part is new.

He says they really want to keep me on for next year.
He says they don't know if they'll have a position for me.
He says he'll try to work something out.

This is flattering, since I do like this school. The faculty is really enthusiastic and has a DIY approach to building the curriculum Right(tm) that I find attractive. However, as flattering as it is, I have the feeling that it's not going to convert itself into a job offer in time. Or worse, that it might turn into an offer after we've committed to moving back to CA. That would be amazingly frustrating.

However, for today I'm treating it as a vote of confidence. Secondary school teaching is not what my R1 research school trained me for, but apparently I'm good at it.

And that's just nice.

More poems!

Totally like whatever, you know?
Taylor Mali

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?


Declarative sentences -- so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?


What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally...
I mean absolutely... You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like...
whatever!


And so actually our disarticulation... ness
is just a clever sort of... thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since...
you know, a long, long time ago!


I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

In November
by Lisel Mueller

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.